ABSTRACT: Several new approaches for treatment of Central Nervous System (CNS) disorders are currently under investigation, including the use of rehabilitation training strategies, which are often combined with electrical and/or pharmacological modulation of spinal locomotor circuitries. While these approaches show great promise in the laboratory setting, there still exists a ...

Abstract Purpose: This study explored therapists' attitudes to and strategies for developing client-centred approaches in relation to the provision of mobility devices. Method: Four physiotherapists and eight occupational therapists in a Swedish municipality context were interviewed according to a semi-structured interview guide. Data collection and analysis were guided by a ...

This study examined the validity and reliability of the Assessment of Work Performance (AWP) using Rasch analysis. The AWP was administered to 365 clients with a variety of work-related problems. Rasch analysis and principal component analysis were used to examine the appropriateness of the rating scales and unidimensionality of AWP ...

Despite rapid growth of robot assisted catheterization in recent years, most current platforms are based on master-slave designs with limited operator-robot collaborative control and automation. Under this setup, information concerning subject specific behavior and context-driven manoeuvre is not re-utilized for subsequent intervention. For endovascular catheterization, the robot itself is designed ...

The recording of human movement is an essential requirement for biomechanical, clinical, and occupational analysis, allowing assessment of postural variation, occupational risks, and preventive programs in physical therapy and rehabilitation. The flexible electrogoniometer (EGM), considered a reliable and accurate device, is used for dynamic recordings of different joints. Despite these ...

The clinical worksite constitutes a naturally clustered environment, posing challenges in the statistical analysis of quality improvement interventions such as computerized decision support. Ignoring clustering in the analysis may lead to biased effect estimates, underestimating the variance and hence type I errors. This paper presents a secondary analysis on data ...

Automating documentation of physical activity data (e.g., duration and speed of walking or propelling a wheelchair) into the electronic medical record (EMR) offers promise for improving efficiency of documentation and understanding of best practices in the rehabilitation and home health settings. Commercially available devices which could be used to automate ...

With progressively increasing anthropogenic habitat disturbances, restoration of impacted landscapes is becoming a critical element of biodiversity conservation. Evaluation of success in restoration ecology rarely includes faunal components, usually only encompassing abiotic and floral components of the ecosystems. Even when fauna is explicitly included, it is usually only species presence/absence ...

The aims of this study were to identify the determinants influencing the inpatient rehabilitation length of stay (LoS) and discharge modality (DisMod) after hip or knee replacement surgery. Data were retrieved for 306 patients (185 females, 121 males) who were admitted to a Swiss orthopaedic rehabilitation facility between 2007 and ...

Physical medicine rehabilitation interventions for post-acute traumatic brain injury (TBI) are heterogeneous and subject to differences based on multi-disciplinary treatment plans [1]. There is no universal knowledge representation (KR) model for TBI rehabilitation which impedes data collection, aggregation, computation, and sharing. This paper describes results of an analysis of the ...

The objective of this study was to further develop the Ida Institute model on communication partners' (CPs) journey through experiences of person with hearing impairment (PHI), based on the perspectives of CPs. Nine CPs of hearing aid users participated in this study, recruited through the Swansea hearing impaired support group. ...

Adults with vision and hearing loss, or dual sensory loss (DSL), present with a wide range of needs and abilities. This creates many challenges when attempting to set the most appropriate and equitable funding levels. Case-mix (CM) funding models represent one method for understanding client characteristics that correlate with resource ...

VALID RESEARCH ON NEGLECT REHABILITATION DEMANDS A STATISTICAL APPROACH COMMENSURATE WITH THE CHARACTERISTICS OF NEGLECT REHABILITATION DATA: neglect arises from impairment in distinct brain networks leading to large between-subject variability in baseline symptoms and recovery trajectories. Studies enrolling medically ill, disabled patients, may suffer from missing, unbalanced data, and small ...

The paper describes a tele-rehabilitation system for simultaneous motor rehabilitation (post-stroke and post-arthroscopy) and continuous patient's condition assessment with the focus on patient safety observations. Micro-electro-mechanical accelerometer and gyroscope sensors attached to the patient gather information about the performed therapeutic exercises. The measurement data processing of the vital sign sensors ...

Limitations in performing activities of daily living (ADL) are important indicators of health and overall wellness, yet relatively few studies specifically identify the ADL abilities of people living with HIV/AIDS (PHAs). Given the wide range of abilities and ages of PHAs, there is an urgent need to utilize an assessment ...

This paper presents a novel approach that involves first identifying and verifying the available superficial muscles that can be recorded by surface electromyography (EMG) signals, and then developing a musculoskeletal model based on these findings, which have specifically independent DOFs for movement. Such independently controlled multiple DOF EMG-driven models have ...

Aphasia is one of the most striking cognitive sequels of strokes and other cerebral lesions, and attempts to rehabilitate aphasic patients have been undertaken for many years. Following a brief overview of the epidemiology and the clinical characteristics of aphasia, the chapter presents the major traditional approaches to rehabilitation. They ...

Many survivors of stroke experience arm impairments, which can severely impact their quality of life. Forcing use of the impaired arm appears to improve functional recovery in post-stroke hemiplegic patients, however the mechanisms underlying improved recovery remain unclear. Animal models of post-stroke rehabilitation could prove critical to investigating such mechanisms, ...

Walking ability, though important for quality of life and participation in social and economic activities, can be adversely affected by neurological disorders, such as Spinal Cord Injury, Stroke, Multiple Sclerosis or Traumatic Brain Injury. The aim of this study is to evaluate if the energy cost of walking (CW), in ...

A diagnostic platform for the early functional assessment of post-stroke patients was designed in order to perform isometric measurements during activities of daily living (ADL) tasks. The outcome of these measurements can contribute to verify the integrity of a post-stroke existing or altered "internal model" for a particular functional task. ...

To examine the multivariate association between a model of self-perceived non-motor aspects and disability in cervical dystonia. A prospective and correlational design with two points of assessment. All 273 members with cervical dystonia from the Swedish Dystonia Patient Association were invited to participate. Data were collected with one self-reported questionnaire. ...

Discourse analysis following the work of Michel Foucault has become a valuable methodology in the critical analysis of a broad range of topics relating to health. However, it can be a daunting task, in that there seems to be both a huge number of possible approaches to carrying out this ...

The aim of this study was to analyze the voice quality of alaryngeal tracheoesophageal and esophageal speech, and to determine which of them is more similar to laryngeal voice production, and thus more acceptable as a rehabilitation method of laryngectomized persons. Objective voice evaluation was performed on a sample of ...

BACKGROUND: and purpose. Augmenting changes in recovery is core to the rehabilitation process following a stroke. Hence it is essential that outcome measures are able to detect change as it occurs, a property known as responsiveness. This article critically reviewed the responsiveness of functional outcome measures following stroke, specifically examining ...

Legibility is important for functional, handwritten communication. Deficits in legibility can impair occupational performance following stroke or trauma. Few instruments are available to assess adult handwriting legibility during rehabilitation. The aim of this study was to compare inter-rater reliability of a new four-point legibility rating instrument with two existing instruments, ...

Purpose: Casemix models for funding activity in health care and assessing performance depend on data based on uniformity of resource utilisation. It has long been an ideal to relate the measure of value more to patient outcome than output. A problem frequently expressed by clinicians is that measures of activity ...

Pervasive healthcare is beginning to investigate how novel sensory technologies can be used to measure body movements and provide various forms of feedback. This position paper reflects on a blended design approach that uses a combination of technology inspiration, consultation with experts and user-centred design for the development of a ...

External genitalia development occurs through a combination of hormone independent, hormone dependent, and endocrine pathways. Perturbation of these pathways can lead to abnormal external genitalia development. We review human and animal mechanisms of normal and abnormal external genitalia development, and we evaluate abnormal mechanisms that lead to hypospadias. We also ...

Since their discovery in 1958, the function of specialized salt-secreting glands in tetrapods has been studied in great detail, and such studies continue to contribute to a general understanding of transport mechanisms of epithelial water and ions. Interestingly, during that same time period, there have been only few attempts to ...

The Standard Model is the theory used to describe the interactions between fundamental particles and fundamental forces. It is remarkably successful at predicting the outcome of particle physics experiments. However, the theory has not yet been completely verified. In particular, one of the most vital constituents, the Higgs boson, has ...

For the past year, experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have started exploring physics at the high-energy frontier. Thanks to the superb turn-on of the LHC, a rich harvest of initial physics results have already been obtained by the two general-purpose experiments A Toroidal LHC Apparatus (ATLAS) and the ...

In this paper, I present a view of organizational and financial matters relevant for the successful construction and operation of the experimental set-ups at the Large Hadron Collider of CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics in Geneva. Construction of these experiments was particularly challenging: new detector technologies had to ...

Quantifying sweat gland activation provides important information when explaining differences in sweat rate between populations and physiological conditions. However, no standard technique has been proposed to measure sweat gland activation, while the reliability of sweat gland activation measurements is unknown. We examined the interrater and internal reliability of the modified-iodine ...

In the literature, few studies analyze the effect of GH therapy on height, preferring a more indirect approach, where factors influencing the total pubertal and pre-pubertal growth in GH-deficient patients are evaluated and subsequently used to estimate the overall effect at the end of the therapy; unfortunately, this approach does ...

For most wireless sensor network (WSN) applications, the positions of the sensor nodes need to be known. Global positioning systems have not fitted into WSNs very well owing to their price, power consumption, accuracy and limitations in their operating environment. Hence, the last decade has brought about a large number ...

The technological advances in medical sensors, low-power microelectronics and miniaturization, wireless communications and networks have enabled the appearance of a new generation of wireless sensor networks: the so-called wireless body area networks (WBAN). These networks can be used for continuous monitoring of vital parameters, movement, and the surrounding environment. The ...

Mechanical neck disorder (MND) is one of the most common health issues and is characterized by restricted cervical mobility. However, traditional kinematic information often focuses on primary movement in the cardinal plane, which seems insufficient to fully determine the kinematics of the cervical spine because of the complexity of the ...

Non-invasive estimation of minute ventilation is important for quantifying the intensity of physical activity of individuals. In this paper, several improved regression models are presented, based on the measurement of chest and abdomen movements from sensor belts worn by subjects (n = 50) engaged in 14 types of physical activity. ...

Tremendous advances in neuroimaging methods and analytic techniques hold great promise in providing the rehabilitation clinician with a much greater understanding of brain pathology and its potential influence on rehabilitation outcome. This special issues of NeuroRehabilitation overviews the field. Contemporary neuroimaging methods are reviewed specifically in traumatic brain injury (TBI), ...

This paper proposes an approach for the automated segmentation and identification of movement segments from continuous time series data of human movement, collected through motion capture of ambulatory sensors. The proposed approach uses a two stage identification and recognition process, based on velocity and stochastic modeling of each motion to ...

The Microsoft Kinect camera is becoming increasingly popular in many areas aside from entertainment, including human activity monitoring and rehabilitation. Many people, however, fail to consider the reliability and accuracy of the Kinect human pose estimation when they depend on it as a measuring system. In this paper we compare ...

This study tested a mediated effects model of psychological and behavioral adaptation to puberty within the context of physical activity (PA). Biological maturity status, physical self-concept, PA, and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) were assessed in 222 female British year 7 to 9 pupils (mean age = 12.7 years, SD ...

Because physical activity researchers are increasingly using objective portable devices, this review describes the current state of the technology to assess physical activity, with a focus on specific sensors and sensor properties currently used in monitors and their strengths and weaknesses. Additional sensors and sensor properties desirable for activity measurement ...

A unique methodology for the optimal specification of sewer rehabilitation investment is presented in this paper. By accounting for the critical risk of asset failure, this methodology builds on previously successful work which explored the application of multi-objective optimisation tools to assist engineers with the specification of optimal rehabilitation strategies. ...

For rehabilitative devices to restore functional movement to paralyzed individuals, user intent must be determined from signals that remain under voluntary control. Tracking eye movements is a natural way to learn about an intended reach target and, when combined with just a small set of electromyograms (EMGs) in a probabilistic ...

This paper introduces Vedic principles of therapy as a holistic integration of healing and human development. The most integrative aspect is a "consciousness-based" approach in which the bottom line of the mind is consciousness itself, accessed by transcending mental activity to its simplest ground state. This directly contrasts with "unconscious-based" ...